Saturday, October 29, 2005

It is no secret that I opposed the Miers nomination. I also do not believe the theory that this was some horrible miscarriage of justice. I do not think conservative opinion makers were responsible for her withdrawal. People have a constitutional right to free speech. They have the constitutional right to pressure both the congress, and the executive with any verbal tool they feel like using. I think this demonstrates strength of character and participation in government.

The political parties involved, in this process, made all the final decisions here.

They decided whether to be driven by pressure, stand on principle, make all the phone calls, advise, consent, dissent or pose for the cameras and smile.

I know emotions were high on this one. I visited a blog where the blogger was excoriating Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham for using their media pulpit against Miers. She was drawing some sort of parallel between the type of personal destruction wrought by the left, and the criticism of conservatives. She complained about Miers information being cherry picked and used as a weapon. At the end of the exchange what does she do? She visits my blog, cherry picks some information, then posts an insulting threat, directed at me, in the comments. She was demanding dignity for her nominee, while denying dignity to those who disagreed with her. Emotion breeds hypocrisy.

President Bush made his choice

President Bush nominated Miers, knowing the reaction he and Ms Miers would get from that nomination. If he did not know, he should have. The reaction was instantaneous. The left likes to always accuse the conservatives of being zombie ditto heads, marching in fascist lockstep. That ridiculous label was proven false, by this SCOTUS drama. We think. We express those thoughts. We do it without reservation or remorse, even when we vehemently disagree. A controversial choice was destined for controversy.

President Bush did not defend the choice

Bush asked me to trust his choice, without reservation and wait through the process. I am sorry. I voted for the President. I financially supported the president. I firmly support him on many issues. I firmly disagree on others. I did not marry the president. There is not an implicit trust relationship here.

Frankly, I scrutinize everyone, within the borders of the District of Columbia. When it comes to the Washington crowd, trust must be earned. I am not a bleating Pollyanna. Public skepticism is healthy.

President Bush did not support Ms. Miers with anything more substantive than what you see above. When asked for details, he could have done one of two things. First, he could have handed them over. Or, since this is not a criminal prosecution , he could have claimed executive privilege and respectfully said no. Either way, he could have insisted the Senate proceed anyway. What did he do? He sat back and let his beloved nominee submit her resignation. No factual support or moral support, publicly uttered.

Deja Vu. Can anybody say Miguel Estrada? The president only stood up and really rallied for his nominee after Estrada was filibustered into history. Now that was a case of a person being denied their vote after the approval of the SJC. The Democrats did it, while the executive watched them do it.

Miers did not defend herself

Many of the opinions out there, say Ms. Miers was never tested in the SJC for her strength of character. What did she think was going to happen to her one way or another, being a trusted member of the Bush administration and a political ally? This is Washington DC, with a liberal MSM. They play Hardball. Remember Clarence Thomas? Remember the brutal laundry wringers they pushed him through? Harriet could have said ok, I am going to stick it out. I am going to demand those hearings. I am going to demand that vote. She could have had all of that, even though her chances were slim.

Maybe her resignation meant that she was bowing to the President's wavering doubt, out of loyalty.

Maybe it meant she did not want to face the crucible.

Maybe it meant she firmly believed that her chances were hopeless

Maybe she realized she was not up to the job

The first two are weak choices, with regards to a judicial pillar, expected to warm that seat for decades. The third is a judgement call, based on whether to stand on principle or not.

The last is a heroic introspection, analysis and conclusion, which should be applauded. If this was the reason, she spared herself, the president and the people the embarrassment of a brutal SJC process.

In any event, her voice was withdrawn by her own personal judgement.

The Senate's half-hearted support

Many of the senators had private audiences with Miers. They expressed their doubts, to both the president and the public. Big deal. Is this an earth shattering surprise? Is this a violation of due process? I think not.

You had congressmen openly lamenting Ms. Miers plight before the MSM cameras. Does anyone seriously think that Kennedy, Shumer and Reid were doing this out of respect for Ms Miers' right to advice and consent? They would pull that filibuster out in a New York minute, if they even sniffed a faint waft of conservative victory. This looked dangerously suspicious to me.

Some senators were undoubtedly swayed by public opinion of conservatives.

If the Miers supporters were so fired up and concerned about these votes, why didn't they step up and make the same fuming stink their counterparts did? It is not like the waffling support was absent from the news every day. I am sick of hearing these whining post-mortem laments about how Rush Limbaugh is now running the country or that other organization is controlling the vote. I hear enough of that garbage from the Democrats. What did all that whining cost them? All of their power in government. Welcome to representative government 101. The loudest mouse gets all the cheese. If you want more, squeek louder, when the cheese is being passed out.

Do not blame the Strong Willed

Sorry, in the realm of government power, the meek never inherit the earth. The meek wait around to be told what to do, where to go and how to vote by those unafraid to do so. Anyone who is wringing their hands over Ms. Miers and her lack of hearings, should blame the President, blame Ms. Miers and blame the senators, unwilling to stand on principle, to defend an impending yes vote. If they are blaming those exercising their opinion, their blame is misplaced.

Does anybody notice a theme here? There is no political courage in Washington, period. None of these players seem to possess any vertebrae. Jellyfish need not apply to the SCOTUS, I say. Ginsberg, Breyer and Souter eat jellyfish with their morning coffee and muffins. That is why I want to see another Roberts, Scalia or Thomas. Strong spines for hard times.

The conservatives who openly opined against the Miers nomination, were strong people in this story. They were taking the slings and arrows from both the left and the right. They stood up , spoke and took those hits because they stood on their principles of conservatism and told the perpetual compromise commitee to beware the consequences. This was no act of collective betrayal. It was an act of constitutional triage. They are the ones who took this quote to heart.

"Trust but verify." - Ronald Reagan

They demanded that verify part. If the nominee chose to withdraw, instead of marching toward her hearings, that was the weakness of her DC political position speaking, not the strength of the conservative right wing voice. Some conservatives pushed against the wall. The wall crumbled. The wall was too weak to withstand the pressure. The displeased should grab their constitutional trowels and build a stronger wall, with a stronger nominee.

Where is this irreparable damage?

Will the Harriet Miers nomination debacle cause the demise of the 2006 elections?

This will happen only if Harriet Miers supporters are willing to go to those polls, and pull that lever or stay at home, with this single grudge in mind. They will have to ignore all of the other conservative issues. Short term memory are the watch words here. If the president nominates a strong candidate, in the mold of Roberts, this will all be forgotten.

If the president decides to play the grudge game, by nominating a liberal or another career lightweight, the same vocal conservative base will exert their will again. The same DC players will have all those political and principled choices to make. That might split the party emotionally. That might send a message of serious instability to the large pool of centrist voters. However, the vocal dissenting base does not vote on any single issue. People so strongly plugged into the news and the process do not act like cavalier, waffling moderates in the voting booth. So, will there be damage in the voting booth? Probably not.

I could be wrong, but I don't think most conservatives will make that Ross Perot style mistake again. This has become a deliberate process of nailing conservative stakes down in the fabric of the RNC tent. The bigger the Republican party gets, the more they will have to deal with infighting. A large party means many opinions.

The Democrats can only steal the weak, grudge minded vote. What candy are they going to use to tempt that vote to stay away or join them at play? A liberal agenda? The Un-Bush strategy? What a miserable palette to paint by.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Here is a classic joke about the American Tourister gorilla, trying to beat up a piece of luggage. Try as he might, he can't damage that rough and tough suitcase, built for people on the go.

Here you have a hairless ape, trying to make a joke about beating up somebody who disagrees with him.
Sorry, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't damage that rough and tough political philosophy, built by people in the know.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Go visit jimmyb's post In Support of Unions, before or after you read this. Follow the post to the Balance of Power blog. It's a good read. Rather than post my view in the comments, I felt like talking here. Of course this will be a conservative libertarian argument. That is what I am.

Balance of power is an appropriate term. That is what the problems are all about. Just like political partisans, union partisans and business partisans can be just as extreme. Both are just as vulnerable to corruption and greed. It is common to confuse political partisans with labor market partisans. They often line up together.

Unions provide leverage against inequity, but they suffer from the same frailties that all bureaucracies suffer from. These include the bureaucracies found in government, business and special interest groups. After all, ambitious destructive people are found in all bureaucracies.

When people politically confront abuse and monopolistic aggregation of power, they often successfully achieve their founding goals of fairness, equity, profit and legal justice. Naturally, this justifies the action taken. It also triggers a common human emotional response. This response argues for more of that good thing, to the point of extremism.

Following positive progress however, bureaucracies rarely yield power or authority to the new landscape. A bureaucracy begins to hunt for goals which will sustain its own power and authority. A shift is made, to structural preservation. A shift is made, to protect individuals with power. This shift is often shielded by amplifying minutiae into arguments for inequity and distracting the public debate, by demonizing the opposition.

Does this sound familiar? It is the root of bad politics.

Created but never Destroyed

When was the last time you saw a powerful organization voluntarily dissolve, after achieving what it set out to achieve?

The answer is never. The goals can never be reached. Closure is a threat to the life of the bureaucracy, which now has a life of its own.

Even though doctors are being driven out of practice, insurance companies are leaving entire states and consumers are losing entire services, trial lawyer associations fight tooth and nail to prevent tort reform.

Even though illegal immigration is a social tax burden and undermines the wage stability of American citizens in the manufacturing and building sectors, the business and political lobbies continue to pressure against enforcement of the law.

Even though we have a constitutional amendment and a raft of legislation, race baiters continue to maintain their special interest groups by increasing racial tensions and lobbing false accusations.

The Massachusetts turnpike authority was supposed to dissolve itself years ago, after achieving the goal of building a highway. They floated more bonds to keep themselves alive. This government bureaucracy will need to be forced out of power. It will only be done when the voters get tired enough to fire all the politicians.

Even though labor protection legislation extends far and wide and business labor ethics have improved dramatically, unions still push for collective bargaining, entitlements and sanctuary for poor performers. There must always be an inequity to be found and fought for, even if it must be created.

So, unions share the same entrenched corruption and bad company as many other organizations, including big business. Who needs to go over the subject of organized crime? It occurs everywhere.

Balancing the Scales

Unions are only a single element in a system of checks and balances. To a degree, self regulation will occur naturally; but only if people are free to choose their associations. What an absolutely brilliant constitutional right that is, in both simplicity and effectiveness.

There really is no better choice than the one we have. Without formal trade, no business is bad business. Governments cannot set prices, since it would take a bureaucracy so big, there would be nobody left to produce anything. The fluid of supply and demand must flow freely, to set prices properly. However, without government monetary standards, markets cannot regulate the overall money supply, and control inflation.

If there were no organized labor to check business, there would be monopoly and abuse of labor. This is why Teddy Roosevelt broke the trusts.

If there were a pure socialist government, there would be stagnant consumer markets, high unemployment, large black markets and crippling taxes.

If there were a totalitarian or communist government, the only motivation for progress would be the motivation to climb the ladder of bureaucracy, or move within the black markets. You get poor quality from the products produced within the system. You get a dangerous lack of standards for the products produced illegally. You get low production, starvation and brutal inefficiency.

If there were anarchy, there would be no laws, no safety standards and the return of clans of power. You would have to discard all business that operate on the efficiency of scale, like energy, telecommunications, national retail, hardware, medicine etc.

Communication and often compromise, for the overall benefit of our great standard of living, is the only way the entire system can stay healthy. Like markets, a strong educated public will find the free associations with each other that make the overall standard of living better.

Forcing people to associate with any bureaucracy, through collective bargaining, government entitlement dependency, racial quotas and non-compete employment contracts are all artificial barriers to free association. These things do not improve society, they create mechanisms to support bureaucratic power in unions, politics and business, respectively.

It happens in the Consumer Markets

When union producers of a product force selfish fiscal priority over the quality of the product itself, that is a bureaucratic decision. The long term result is the destruction of the system providing the benefit. Read Don Surber's The Delphi Oracle post. You will see what I mean. Consumers, who freely associate with whatever they like, will not tolerate poor attitude being engineered and assembled into their products. My Toyota Tacoma truck is built in Kentucky. I bought it because it does not eat through clutches like my Chevy did. It does not smoke ignition modules, suffer from tailgate electrical fires and spontaneously reset its computer like my Ford Bronco did. My consumer dollar is no longer flowing into union pockets. Are they responsible? I cannot say for sure, but I do not buy those products anymore.

Unions which do not respect their environment, over their constituents, face the danger of extinction. When they take away the right of the worker to freely dissociate with the union, they cover up flaws which accelerate this extinction. When they take away the consumer's right to associate with all manufacturers, through trade barriers, they convince consumers that they do not need to compete with quality. These activities breed resentment and political opposition. You can argue against them all you want. Consumers have deaf ears, deep pockets and they pull voting levers.

The Government does it Too

Teacher's unions are trying every desperate political and emotional gambit they can to prevent people from freely associating their tax money with alternatives. They keep saying it's for the benefit of the children, not just the teachers in the union. They fought mandatory testing in MA for years. They say it is unfair. The statistics are beginning to prove them wrong.

How worse can it possibly be, than the pathetic horrible product they have been peddling for years?

How can you measure quality, when they refuse to let you put a meter on it?

Here is the ultimate hypocrisy. Since tax money is involved, the schools fall under the auspices of government. Therefore, they argue that the first amendment strictly prohibits bringing religious discussion into the schools, even in historical context. In the very same first amendment, the right of people to associate freely is also penned! So, I say, since tax money is involved, the schools fall under the auspices of government. Therefore, the first amendment prohibits the public schools from forcing parents to grind their kids through a single bureaucracy, which is failing them miserably. We cannot force consumer unions to do this, since they are not under the government umbrella. However, the teachers have argued for years that they are!

Does the teacher's union wage their labor battle, by asserting they have the highest quality standards over all other possibilities? No. They wage the battle by trying to take away your constitutional right to free association and consumer choice.

So, Do I support Unions?

The answer is yes! Of course there is a major stipulation. I only support them when their goals include a realistic benefit for the people served by the product. They are the people with the money, not the 'evil' business or the 'evil' government. If people are leaving a union, than the union is no longer serving an equitable purpose, or it has become self-serving; the truth will be exposed by the adjustment of membership. I will not support any organization, union or otherwise, that selfishly chooses to ignore economics, overall social well-being and most important of all, a member's right of free association or the consumer's right of free association.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Just wondering if you're the grand Machiavellian master who is behind setting up the scenario to have Condoleeza Rice to run for president after her promotion to VP when Dick Cheney decides to step aside? If so, Kudos...

Yes. Rove speaks truly to me.Dick Cheney is going to step aside?Do you possess evil knowledge unknown to Me?I want a personal audience with you. If you are unable to meet with me, please send me an RSVP e-mail to rove@whitehouse.gov.

If you accept put, "I accept evil job #g46h793" in the subject line. Wait for further instructions.

If you are unable to make it, put "Disintegration job #g46h793". Include a google map hyperlink or your current GPS coordinates in the mail. I, the great and powerful Rove will reply in person. Make sure you wear a red shirt.Thank you for your courage and diligence. Dr. Phat Tony said...

OH I'm thinking of a good one. You just wait...

I am immortal and Rove's patience is infinite. Just don't step in front of any plants or step on any rocks while you compose your question.

Harriet Miers is like a nun. She has demonstrated that she has no extensive written opinion. She is much like Insolukuta here. If she is confirmed, I have a special set of neck antennae just for her, so she may receive my personal instructions.

And when will DPT look at my blogger profile and realize I'm not a guy?

Damn. This third person crap makes me feel like Bob Dole!

GunnNutt, your love of large caliber weapons, big loyal dogs and beating up hippies means that even without testicles, you have a bigger set of testicles than most guys in our sensitive metrosexual culture.

GunnNutt said: "When will men stop believing crap that women are attracted to sensitive, metrosexual males?"

DPT said:"This one is easy, next time you see a man about to go all soft and sensitive, or buy socks to match his man bag, hit him and take his girlfriend."

As GunnNutt indicated, a good conservative woman would quickly lose her attraction to this budding metro flower. DPT's solution could go either way. If it's another guy stealing his girlfriend, it is good old healthy sexual conquest, as nature intended. If it's another woman, stealing his girlfriend, it's a rescue operation, intended to save valuable genetic material. After all, women do have a biological clock, with cycles that should not be wasted.Fitch said...

Weren't you supposed to tell us about the downloads? Something about waiting for the "gong" and constructing a receiver using "roof flashing and Diet Mountain Dew can aerials." I need to know, oh great Isolukuta.

Ah memories. That was a whole week ago. This period is easily a product lifetime in our wonderful high speed, high tech capitalist world of planned obsolescence. It's all about antennae now. You should sign up for the Roverizon 'Secure Bliss' plan. It includes a daily basic brain agitation and spin dry, followed by an NRO wax and Limbuff.As for the gong, Rove rings it every time he hungers, and the feeders respond. I feel him calling me now...

Yes. Rove speaks truly to me. You obviously realize the superior nature of our technology versus the liberals. They have been relying on the street protest technique of heavy narcotics and large flash cards for decades. They may have to wait a whole day for their programming to be delivered and processed by drunken sleep hypnopaedia through the Clinton News Network, the All Bill Clinton network, the More Stupid News about Bill Clinton network, the Clinton Butt Snorkeling network and Numbing Progressive Radio.Evil Conservatives are self-programmed, receiving thousands of news tidbits and subliminal instructions directly and electronically. The DNC is like a big mainframe with millions of dumb terminals. The RNC is like millions of powerful computers squabbling over the internet, with frequent OS upgrades. You have intrigued me Fitch. I may yet have Insolukuta dig up that old hat schematic.

Wasn't Clinton the 42nd President?

Ah yes. the dim time again. The Clinton Presidency means nothing to me.41 + nothing + 1 = 42This is a mistake I often make. The correction, as you can see, has been made.

Insolukuty, oh evil and sapient one. ;) What is the best maniacal advice in reinvigorating the VRWC machine and what lefty fears shall we next exploit in combating "the beast" in 08 should "it" indeed decide to run?

Yes. Rove speaks truly to me.This is a tough one. As angry as the conservative base is, it must stay unified. Keep convincing each other that the long term goal is to defeat the beast by staying together. Listen to the downloads. Plugging up the borders now will guarantee reinvigoration. I try to convince the President, but his brother and Texas business associates override me every time. There is plenty of candy in the Halloween bag. Permanent tax cuts, Capture of Osama dead or alive, public beheading of Saddam, half the UN doing the perp. walk, all of the ACLU doing the perp. walk, former minions of the beast doing the perp. walk and those nice rice crispy chocolate things that coat the inside of your mouth while you break them up with your tongue.

The biggest lefty fear is that Hillary really is turning conservative and not just faking it. This requires a counter-intuitive push. Put faces like Cindy Sheehan out there every chance you get. Have her bitch moan and cry about what a war hawk Hillary is. Have people like her whittle away the granola and Birkenstock base and scare away the moderates. Make them all believe she is betraying them. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I will have Insolukuta send her a special fruit basket.

What? The hell you will.

We will take this internal discussion off-line! Ahem. All our evil conservative friends know she is a fake. Hillary knows she is a fake. She also knows we are winning the war in Iraq and the MSM credibility war.

Also, I'm wondering what type of lotion, if any, you use in the evil hand rubbing needs dept. Oh, and do you put a little honey in your tea before or after bwahahahahahaing?

Not being a metrosexual, I prefer the Lava pump. There's nothing like a handful of abrasive pumice for real exfoliation. You can tell by the redness of my flesh, that it's a great body lotion too.

Tea? As you know, evil conservatives only drink the hot blood of disenfranchised Palm county voters. In this case, a little honey after bwahahahahahaing, to soothe the throat.

I beesech you answer one question. What body will next be possesed of the evil incarnate required to be the Overlord of the Federal Reserve?

Yes. Rove speaks truly to me.A delicate question for sure. Overlord Greenspan has done a good bang up job. If my evil plan were designed to just piss off the left, I would might choose the venerable economist Thomas Sowell. Of course my usual dark Rovian plans involve some sort of mysterious former/current Democrat stealth candidate, so I can maximize evil. First I piss off the liberals by just being me. Second, I piss off the conservative base by choosing say, former Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin. Meanwhile, I will prepare for that special surgical antennae installation, with a really good signal booster.

Let's stick to a recent popular theme. The libs love to believe we are all fascist mind slaves to the evil Rove/Limbaugh conspiracy.

Who are we to argue?

My name is Isolukuta. I am the leader of the feeders of Rove.You may notice those antennae sticking out of my neck. Those are the eyes and ears by which the mighty Rove sees through me.They were given to me in the dim time, which was sometime between The great President Reagan and President Bush 42 43.

It's hard to remember, since my tranquil life of fruit collection, listening to conservative talk radio and basking in immortal celibacy leaves me thinking of nothing else.

This is the evil lair of Master Rove. As you can see, he has been engaged in evil garage cleaning. Bring your tribute of Cuban cigars, filet mignons, lobster and single malt scotch. Throw them in the big mouth over there.

Alright forget all that.

Just ask your questions. The mighty Rove will not speak to you directly. He speaks only through me.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

This is for the noodle spine Republicans and their progressive counterparts, who think conservatives like myself will abandon our political authority and fall apart at the seams.

I bring back a fond Clinton melody from the past. We haven't forgotten a thing. Imagine this song being belted out, by the golden liberal pipes of Babs Streisand, to the tune 'The Way We Were'. This is a miniscule sample of all the skeletons shuffling around in the Clinton mortuary. If Hillary runs, DC will look like Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The state is now completely lousy with moral rejects from GLAD. Every single one of them has this big moby chip on their shoulder. Last night, around eightish, I was in our local Stop and Shop supermarket, at the Deli counter, waiting with my ticket.

"Number 54." Chimed the delightful cherub behind the counter.

"Here." Your's truly said, placing his ticket in the small plastic receptacle.

"I have been waiting here way longer than you!" An angry voice belts out to my side.

Frankly, I didn't see her at all. Apparently the staff didn't either, since they did not rush to her defense, as they usually do. This woman looked late fifties, early sixties, short hair, bottle bottom spectacles, no ring on her finger, male attire, male voice. You are beginning to get the picture. She was probably browsing blue cheese or something equally moldy.

"Sorry, But I didn't see you." I said with raised eyebrows.

"Well I was HERE." She spat.

"O .. K ... But there is this ticket vending machine."

"There were two of us here, I was waiting."

"Look, I grabbed a ticket ... the girl called the number."

"Awright, go ahead A$$HOLE!" Loud. So everyone gets the love note.

Now, she might have been there. I probably would have relented, in a friendly fashion, had she asked nicely. Insolublog's formula for embarrassing public nuisances like this obnoxious bitch, kicked in immediately. What is my first rule of thumb?

Calmly gather data. You will need it.

I cannot place enough emphasis on the importance of this. If you have an age and gender match, circumstances like this might entice you to deliver immediate physical justice. Even if this is true, don't bother. What does that get you? A visit from your local Wyatt Earp, who might have to clean up a dead body, which he hates to do.

Secondly, never use the ugly language you will be so tempted to use. You have another audience to entertain, namely the store staff. So, I strongly insisted she go ahead of me. This means I will have all they time in the world, to work my magic, on her impending deli transaction.

"By all MEANS!, Don't let me stand in your way!" I strongly gestured with the sweeping posture of a theatre usher.

The poor counter girl was nervous. I was going to make her day. Our protagonist had to be asked three times what type of roast beef she wanted.

The staff looked pallid. You would have thought they had a bloody torso up on the slicer. The last customer snuck in to grab some pita. He had that grimace you get when you are playing "Don't break the Ice" and you are at the precipice of mechanical failure.

"You might need straight bleach. Do you kiss your life partner with that mouth?" I quipped, using my first round of data.

Of course I did not know her gender preference with absolute certainty. It was an educated guess. I looked over at the girl who was juggling that 20lb rare Carando slab. I winked. That did it. She smiled with clenched teeth and tiptoed to the slicer.

"F%@#k you!... a$$hole!" Ms. Manners purpled.

It looks like we have a one word wonder here. I detected a little NYC (perhaps) in the accent. With that extensive five decades of accumulated vocabulary, she was probably a tenured public teacher.

"Here you go. Will there be anything else?" The counter girl managed to blurt out.

"I don't think so; It stinks of a$$hole around here."
Nice. Now she is spraying the counter girl with her oral diarrhea. I was smiling now. Time for another piece of data.

"Miss." I addressed the counter girl with a chuckle, "You should check that beef for hormones." Add a brisk nod of affirmation, loud whisper with "I think her dose is a bit high."

"Oh, you think you are just the biggest smartest a$$hole in the world, don't you?!" Straight from the sewer pipe, to you.

I am beginning to think some court ordered medication has been skipped. I point both index fingers, gun style, to the repeat offender, as I rebound with a nice recycled joke from high school.

"You see what I mean Miss? Whore... moans."

Dusty van Dyke snorts like a bull and starts to circle the deli. I was not really fair to the staff. They were heroic in their attempts to keep straight faces. I figured they did not want to deal with management, should my nemesis raise any personal objections to their behavior. The girl filled my order for roast beef and Hoffman's sharp cheese. I suspect that Dusty was waiting for me to move my smelly a$hole away from the counter, so she could bring the rest of the bacon home to the wife.

As the cute elfin counter girl passed my wrapped cheese, She leaned forward, down patted the air, like a conductor, with her other clear plastic glove.

Now is the proper time to plant that seed of an implied threat, in the virgin soil of truth.

"(Sigh) I guess I will now take my deli wares to the parking lot."

Place loud emphasis on the last two words, so they may be heard by the intended party. Of course you just drive off, letting any potential fear and imagination work wonders. Given the hormone induced beef aggression, it probably had little effect.

It is just another wonderful evening in Mr. Roger's liberal Massachusetts neighborhood, where the neighbors love mankind, but generally hate men. I am enjoying my portion of that rare roast beef, with some fresh tomato, right now. Yummy.

Monday, October 10, 2005

I am going to put on my premonition cap, and take a few guesses on what your frightened children will not see in the film:

You will not see smurfs lying dead from nerve gas experiments.

You will not see a bomb laden smurf dash into a crowded school and detonate himself.

You will not see suicide smurfs fly planes into buildings containing other smurfs.

Smurfette will not have her genitals mutilated by Papa Smurf.

Smurfette will not be forced to wear a full body burqa, and be beaten by young male Smurfs wearing turbans, if she doesn't.

Smurfs will not be lined up and have their limbs hacked off by tribal foes, for refusing to work as slaves in diamond mines.

You will not see the starving parents of starving baby smurfs told they cannot grow or eat food because it's genetically modified.

You will not see baby Smurfs dying of AIDS, because telling their AIDS infected parents to engage in abstention might send the wrong message to the western community, which believes in freedom of copulation with anything at any time.

Hey UNICEF, take some advice from Laura Ingraham. Shut up and feed people.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

This is more grist from the insolublog mill of counter-intuitive logic. Over airport coffee, which stinks to high heaven BTW, a family associate was rambling on about the evils of our capitalist culture, the evil of competition and how the violence of professional sports has poisoned the minds of people in Western civilization. He is of the same ilk that accuse guns of killing people. He did have some intelligent observations, with some rather unintelligent conclusions. This insolurant is on competitive spirit in general, sports in specific.Here are some of the pertinent observations that were raised in conversation:

Enraged, rabidly competitive soccer parents, are pushing their kids over the edge.

In many countries, soccer thugs run amok.

There is a rise in extreme sports, with extreme physical risk.

Use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes.

Juvenile criminal behavior by athletes

I could not claim that these things do not exist. I have two eyes, like most observers out there. There are a few other observations to ponder, before we let the end product beg a potentially false conclusion.

Conservation of Energy

I believe the human being and most living things need to engage in competition like they need food and water. It is a basic hard wired survival relic. Competition provides emotional and physical relief for both participants and observers.

Competitive sports have been a part of Western civilization going back beyond the Romans, the Greeks and the Olympic games. Sports existed before Western civilization. Sports have been associated with military strength, national health, individual recognition and the mechanics of teams for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Why did the Taliban ban sports?

They banned sports because the passion of both the observers and players are bled off by participation. It is a grand distraction from the religious indoctrination, offered by the Madrassa. If you are thinking of your favorite team, you are not thinking of Allah. They want to monopolize that emotional resource. There is plenty of undivided passion in a young ignorant suicide bomber.

Why did Hitler use sports to condition the young?

Sports is a tool as good as any other. A hammer may be used to destroy. A hammer may be used to build. A hammer can even build things, that are used for destruction. I do not believe that cultural decay and evil is facilitated by the fostering of our competitive spirit. This is a shallow, straw man generalization, based on the most superficial observations.

The Fall of Individual Merit

Human competitive passion will always find a conduit for relief, regardless of the path offered. It's like the energy of a lighting strike finding the path of least resistance. Taking away the path of the lighting rod, will only force the bolt to seek your house instead. The political correctness movement has been very busy, expunging all instances of individual merit. PC purveyors arrogantly presume that this is a psychologically healthy practice. I believe it is very unhealthy.

We now have multiple high school valedictorians.

We now have flat, uninspired grade scaling of a flat uninspired curriculum.

Self esteem is elevated above achievement.

Discipline is replaced with excuses.

No child gets a gold star or EVERY child gets a gold star. Both are equally perverse.

These people are unwinding the competitive element from every facet of society that can be safely molested. Schools, businesses, government and politics have all been drenched with this acid. They are all showing the signs of poor performance, lack of courage, lousy leadership, fear of risk and unnecessary compromise. My own Republican party has the seat of a winner, but the cowering fear of a loser, for example.

If you take away paths of discharge, for our competitive spirit, the spirit will find other paths to flow along. It will not only find those paths, it will amplify the emotional intensity along those paths. You might see increased ferocity in existing sports, sports advocation, political battles, aggressive business ethics, rise of black markets, games of risk and any path willing to take up the slack. People can become as emotional and obsessive about competition as they are about religion.

An Island of Relief or Source of Corruption?

If you take away the freedom of merit recognition and freedom of economic association, in one set of venues, the gravitational attraction to free venues increases, like the sports industry. Sports is one of those few areas, where the knife of the political thought policeman must cut carefully. You will not see merit removed from sports. You will not see affirmative action move to balance the racial profile of the sports population. Rigorous enforcement of a political correctness dictum on sports, would be political or even physical suicide to the enforcer.

When we take away all of the elements of society, which rejoice over individual achievement, we should not get upset if people become extremist about whatever is left over. Those who advocate destroying competitive spirit, for the health of our civilization, may not have a civilization to turn to, if they succeed. Look at the violence of soccer hooligans, in oppressive liberal European countries. Pointing the finger of blame at the game of soccer is absurd.

The Celebrity Can Go

I remember when the NBA used to be a sport I could watch. Celebrity salaries, endorsements and media pumped egos have damaged that sport. Much of the team dynamic has eroded in the face of lionizing individual success, individual grooming and individual performance over the team and the game. The MSM and its irresponsible quest for scandals, pandering product placement and fawning showers of false praise and unearned compensation are largely responsible.

You might think this is a deconstruction of my previous argument over the virtues of recognizing individual merit. It is not. When the old Lakers and Celtics used to play, all those individuals were known and praised. All were lauded for their performance. They possessed attributes, which are now wounded in the modern NBA. They understood the concept of team discipline, team communication and team execution. They knew they could have their individual merit cake and eat it too. They also knew that individuals who failed to perform, failed the team and themselves.

The Team Can Stay

We are seeing a reversal of this trend in modern Football. You now see more team attitude and success through team oriented strategy, planning and execution; Many successful players speak of the team and team success to the media, even when prompted for the type of eroding gossip the media thrive on. There can be just as much pleasure, in professional humility, as there is in basking beneath the limelight. Players realize that their specialty skills will still be recognized and rewarded. The fans love this. They cannot get enough of it. It reminds us of both our competitive strength and our national unity.

So, why can't the team model be expanded to large numbers of people?

Individual merit (yes it's important) and communication are are two big reasons why teams cannot successfully grow to large proportions.

People love positive individual recognition. They can have that on a small team, without being swamped out in a sea of faces. Why expend all your effort for no personal recognition? Why expend all your effort to be reviled by your peers? This is one of the many reasons Communism is such a dismal failure. Poor or negative recognition means the apathetic are unwilling to lift a finger for the team. It means nobody wants to be seen as a nail, standing proud of the board surface, waiting to be hammered down.

Tight, fast communication cannot be maintained with large groups. Small teams can become so adept at communicating, even subtle visual cues such as expressions and body language generate a practiced efficiency which operates at the subconscious threshold. As soon as the size and complexity of the multitude exceeds the individuals ability to mesh it all together, the magic is destroyed.

What can be done for the large organization?

A successful strategy is the cross-pollination of small team efforts. Individuals can periodically share skills and innovations with other team groups, through the mentoring process. Large groups benefit by small team innovation. Discipline is also facilitated by this behavior. Small teams internalize discipline. Large scale leadership can then operate on the team aggregate. All during this process, individual merit can be appreciated and rewarded. The competitive element keeps everyone sharp.

The Inevitable Checks and Balances

Extremism in any one element is as unhealthy as extremism in diet or religion. Great physical athletes, like Mike Tyson, can be frozen in time, locked in a psychological state of angry juvenile ignorance, unable to understand or reconcile criminal behavior. Simple early education, discipline and training outside of the athletic specialty, may have been the only thing needed to prevent damage to the reputation of the sport. Steroid abuse was permitted to damage the reputation of baseball by eroding the public confidence in the recent record breakers. Weak discipline and unchecked greed coupled with heavy competition pressure and sheltered manipulation by profit oriented handlers, can lead to steroid abuse, showboating, arrogance and ignorance. Sports would not be the first or last area of human endeavor corrupted by greed, putting the money in all the wrong places.The lesson here is that team structure, individual merit and healthy competitive aggression do not exclude each other. They are not the evil things the PC crowd eschew. They can be made to enhance each other. Individuals need merit based recognition. Teams need strong team oriented individuals, with individual strengths. Some must be leaders and the rest must follow. Individuals and teams must have discipline and education, on and off the field. Teams must be small efficient packages of tight communication. Teams must compete for excellence against other teams, but also share their innovations.

The sum of all these things is much greater than the parts. We can all be good sports, and the competitive nature of sports can be good for all of us.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

I know I have not posted in a while. I was an extremely busy week, baking the technical product which pays my bills. Also, my twelve year old cat is very sick and will not be with me much longer; I will do what I must pretty soon. I will begin posting again shortly.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

It breaks my heart that you Mr. President, are the the straw that did it. I relentlessly crave President Ronald Reagan.UPDATE: The juicy debate over Miers is in the comments.

Mr. President, you made a vapid, limp wristed appointment to SCOTUS, just when we needed a powerful victory message. We are all supposed to think it was some sort of super-secret, pull-the-wool-over-the-liberal's eyes move. I don't buy it. I paid for red meat. I want a double portion, extra rare. As much as I relish the thrill of mystery and wonderment over Harriet Mier's philosophical and legal credentials, I would have preferred someone not so eagerly endorsed by the Trotsky committee. I oppose the Miers nomination.

Mr. President, you are presiding over a total failure to enforce immigration law and border security. Those are two violations of your constitutional oath of office. Illegal aliens are pouring over the border. You are doing nothing about it. Any number of terrorists could walk across that border with suitcases full of WMD. Your federal government thinks it is better to prosecute American citizens, seize their property, while you treat Vicente Fox to dinner at the White house. I hate that pompous turd Fox almost as much as I hate Kofi Annan and Jaques Chirac. Build a thirty foot concrete wall on the entire US perimeter. It is a project far less challenging than the Panama Canal or the Hoover Dam.

Mr. President, you are leaving our bank account open without accountability. You decided 40 billion dollars of debt relief to Africa was a great idea. Social Security payments may be offered to Mexican citizens; What are you doing about it? Unrestrained pork is bursting all over Washington faster than those juicy sausages on my gas grill. You did not bother asking us for our approval. Reagan was a big spender too, but he had direction and purpose. I hope and pray to see something soon. Who needs to worry about identity theft, when taxpayer theft is legal and easy. And when are the Iraqis going to pay that surgery bill for painful, rotten dictator extraction? We will take oil vouchers.

Mr. President, you practically french kissed the Clintons at their library dedication. You showered George Tenet with praise and a juicy pension, instead of having him arrested for gross negligence. Your dedicated hard working base do not like to openly see the kind of Washington back slapping, which exposes the DC political culture for the stupid game we all know it is. Many of us endured union fax bully's, tire slashing vandals, and eco-terrorist psycopaths, skilled in the art of weed killer lawn swastikas, for your re-election, mr. President. The former administration's gross inept failures facilitated the terrorist homicide of three thousand of your fellow citizens.

The well of my patience and RNC donations has run dry. I will not wait for the death of a thousand cuts. My vote will remain Republican, as long as the Democrats remain the greater of the two evils. If I donate anything, it will be toward strict conservatives, and conservative organizations. I am a conservative libertarian first, a Republican second.

The eagle has some hard news for you Mr. President.
Listen to him.

The Washington Democrats are never going to like you.

The MSM is never going to like you.

The academic liberal elites are never going to like you.

The European snobs are never going to like you.

We love welfare reform, tax cuts, social security reform, military strength and many of the conservative legal reforms we have seen over the last few years. We love you, but it's a tough love. They are pathetic losers. Stop sucking up to them and start throwing some punches. You are a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. So am I. TR loved to box. He loved a good fight. He kicked a$$ and so should you! Take the advice of Zell Miller. He would have still kicked Saddam's a$$, then he would have wound up his foot and kicked Chris Matthew's a$$ for added pleasure. Zell would start cutting the heads off snakes with his shovel of justice.

Now that I have reminded myself, stop using the term 'bring them to justice' . It stinks. Use the term 'bring them to Jesus' instead. It will piss off the Atheists. Tell them you are sending out 50 caliber invitations to every unshaved rotten melon draped with a rag.

Do you want to keep your Sustaining Members? Start sustaining your members. We love the tax cuts. I know you guys like money. I might be able to offset those rocketing natural gas prices this winter, by burning RNC donor solicitations.

I feel enraged, disappointed, used and abused. Please RNC, help me get it 'back together' for 2006. Someone, anyone, give me a good compelling reason to withdraw this post.